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NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 

BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS 

PART OF VOLUME VII 



BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR 



OF 



Cyrus Ballou Comstock 

1831-1910 



HENRY L. ABBOT 



PRESENTED TO THE ACADEMY AT THE APRIL MEETING, 19^1 



CITY OF WASHINGTON 

PUBLISHED BY THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 






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NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 

BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS 

PART OF VOLUME VII 




BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR 



OF 



Cyrus Ballou Comstock 



1831-1910 



BY 



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HENRY D. ABBOT 



PRESENTED TO THE ACADEMY AT THE APRIL MEETING, 19" 



CITY OF WASHINGTON 

PUBLISHED BY THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 
July, I91I 



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NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 



Of the biographical memoirs which are to be included in Volume VII, 
the following have been issued : 

PAGES. 

I- 22 : Wolcott Gibbs F. W. Clarke 

23- 88 : William Keith Brooks Edwin Grant Conklin 

89-1 14 : Charles Augustus Young Edwin B. Frost 

IT5-141 : Benjamin Silliman ( 1816-1885) Arthur W, Wright 

143-169 : James Hammond Trumbull Arthur W. Wright 

17T-193 : William H. C. Bartlett Edward S. Holden 

195-201 : Cyrus Ballon Comstock Henry L. Abbot 



WASIIINC.TON, It. C. 

PRESS 01' llMil) & DlvTWI'lI.i'R, INC. 

191 I. 



CYRUS BALLOU COMSTOCK. 



(jciieral Cyrus I'allou Comstock was born at West Wren- 
tliam, Massachusetts, on February 3, 183 1, being the son of 
Nathan and Betsey (Cook) Comstock. He represented the 
ninth generation of 'an old New England family, which came 
originally from Devonshire, England, but the exact date of 
emigration is not of record. Late in life he compiled and pub- 
lished a biographical register of the family, from which it 
appears that the first of the name, William Comstock, probably 
removed from Massachusetts to Connecticut in 1635 or 1636, 
and made his home at New London, where he lived to a good 
old age. The Wethersfield records indicate that he took part 
in the expedition which captured the Pequot fort at Mystic in 
May, 1637, killing some five hundred Indians. The next four 
generations of the family resided in Rhode Island, but the 
General's great-grandfather, Nathan Comstock, removed to 
West Wrentham, Massachusetts, which has subsequently con- 
tinued to be the home of his branch of the family. Nathan 
was a Quaker, and consequently took no active part in the 
Revolution, but he was a member of the Massachusetts con- 
vention which ratified the Constitution of the United States on 
February 7, 1788, and was also a member of the general court 
of Massachusetts in 1789. 

The General as a boy studied in the local public schools and 
at an academy in Scituate, Rhode Island. Happening to see 
the operations and instruments of a party making a railroad 
survey, and those of a coast survey party, then occupying the 
primary station at Beaconpole, he became deeply interested in 
such work ; he sought and obtained employment as rodman 
and as leveler on the Providence and Worcester Railroad and 
on the South Shore Railroad of Massachusetts. Nominated 
by the Hon. Horace Mann as cadet at the West Point Military 
Academy in 1851, he was graduated with first honors in 1855, 
receiving a commission as brevet second lieutenant in the Corps 
of Engineers. He served through all grades in that corps to 
that of colonel, inclusive, being retired from active service by 

197 



NATIONAI, ACADEMY BIOGRAPHICAI^ ME^MOIRS — VOL. VII 

Operation of law in 1895. In 1904 he was promoted to the 
grade of brigadier general on the retired list, under the act of 
Congress granting such advancement for military service dur- 
ing the Civil War. He died at New York City on May 29, 
191 o, and his remains were interred with military honors at 
West Point by the side of his wife, Elizabeth, daughter of 
Montgomery Blair. Their marriage had taken place in 1869; 
and her death and that of their infant occurred in 1872. The 
loss was a life-long grief to him. 

Prior to the outbreak of the Civil War he served on the 
construction of fortifications in Florida and Maryland until 
assigned as assistant professor of natural and experimental 
philosophy at the Military Academy, where he remained from 
September, 1859, until July, 1861. 

He was engaged in the construction of the defenses of 
Washington until the opening of the peninsular campaign, 
when he was assigned to the engineering staff of the Army of 
the Potomac, and so continued until after the battle of Chan- 
cellorsville, serving as chief engineer from November, 1862, 
until March, 1863. He was then transferred to the Depart- 
ment of Tennessee, and under General Grant took part (after 
Captain Prime's health failed) as senior engineer at the siege 
and surrender of Vicksburg, continuing on the general's staff 
until himself invalided in September. The Government is now 
erecting in the Vicksburg National Park several tablets to 
commemorate the services of officers in the siege, and one of 
General Comstock is among them. It consists of a portrait 
relief mounted on a granite slab, with an inscription belov/, 
surrounded by a wreath border of laurel. 

He soon recovered his health and returned to duty, with the 
increased rank of lieutenant-colonel, as assistant inspector 
general of the Military Division of the Mississippi. On March 
29, 1864, he was appointed senior aide-de-camp to Lieutenant- 
General Grant, retaining the volunteer rank of lieutenant- 
colonel, and served in that capacity to the end of the war, 
being engaged in the battles of the Wilderness, Spottsylvania, 
Cold Harbor, Petersburg, and in the assault and capture of 
Fort Harrison. He was temporarily detached to accompany 
General Terry as his chief engineer at the capture of Fort 

198 



CYRUS BALLOU COMSTOCK ABBOT 

Fisher in January, 1865, and again to serve as senior engineer 
on the staff of General Canby in the Mobile campaign of Feb- 
ruary, March, and April. He received on the spot from the 
Secretary of War, who arrived on the day after the taking of 
Fort Fisher, the brevets of colonel and brigadier general of 
volunteers. General Terry in his report states : "To Brevet 
Brigadier General C. B. Comstock, aide-de-camp on the staff 
of the lieutenant-general, I am under the deepest obligations. 
At every step of our progress I received from him the most 
valuable assistance. For the final success of our part of the 
operations the country is more indebted to him than to me." 
For his services in the Mobile campaign he was breveted 
major general of volunteers. During the war he received 
four brevets in the Regular Army, the highest being that of 
brigadier general, and attained the rank of major in the Corps 
of Engineers. 

When the war was over. General Grant so highly appreci- 
ated his efficiency that he was retained on his staff with the 
volunteer rank of lieutenant-colonel until May 3, 1870, at 
which date he resigned it, and returned to duty as major in 
the Corps of Engineers, attracted by the offer of the superin- 
tendency of the Geodetic Survey of the Northern and North- 
western Lakes, tendered him by General Humphreys, who was 
cognizant of his eminent fitness for the position. As noted 
above, this duty was directly in line with his early ambition. 

The lake survey had been inaugurated in 1841, and had- 
been directed successively by six officers of engineers, serving 
for comparatively short periods ; among them may be named 
General George G. Meade, then captain of topographical engi- 
neers. The operations were conducted with all the precision 
needful to determine not only the topography and hydrography 
of a region some 17,000 square miles in area, but also to be of 
value in estimating the form and dimensions of the earth. 
This involved the determination of standards of extreme ac- 
curacy, the measurement of eight primary base lines, a pri- 
mary triangulation, covering about 1,650 miles in length, and 
hydrography extending over nearly 10,000 square miles. The 
local amount and direction of the earth's magnetic force and 
the local deflection of the plumb line were also matters to be 

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NATIONAL ACADEMY BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS — VOL. VII 

investigated. General Comstock was able to bring to a suc- 
cessful termination the grand features of the survey, and his 
final report stands as a monument to the professional ability 
of himself and of his associates. It should be added, however, 
that the work still continues and probably will never cease, in 
view of the enormous extension of lake commerce and the 
necessity of noting the changes in hydrography due to ice 
movements and other natural forces, and of keeping the maps 
for navigators always up to date. The General remained in 
charge of the work from 1870 to the completion of the pri- 
mary triangulation in 1882, with only two intermissions; the 
first of about six months, when he was sent to Europe to ex- 
amine the works of improvement at deltas of great rivers, and 
the second for about a year, when on leave of absence in 
Europe with similar objects in view. During this long period 
he also served on several temporary boards to report on tech- 
nical lake-harbor problems and on the improvement of low- 
water navigation on the Mississippi River, and he also acted as 
superintending engineer to examine the progress of Eads' 
jetties at the mouth, upon which he rendered six reports in 

1875-1877- 

His next important assignment was to the Mississippi River 
Commission, which was created by act of Congress, approved 
June 28, 1879. He was detailed at once as a member, and con- 
tinued to serve on it for sixteen years until his retirement 
from active service in 1895, being its president for the last 
five years. Many difficult hydraulic problems, and some legal 
in character, came before the board for consideration, and 
General Comstock's record met the approval of those most 
conversant with such matters. 

After August 2, 1882, he was also a member of the perma- 
nent board of engineers for fortifications and river and harbor 
improvements, where our official relations were most intimate, 
leaving many pleasant memories. In addition to these board 
duties he served as division engineer of the Southwestern 
Division after December, 1888, and he commanded the Engi- 
neer School of Application, then stationed at Willets Point, 
Xew York Harbor, for about a year, in 1886-1887. He repre- 
sented the War Department at the Fifth Congress of Inter- 

200 



CYRUS BALLOU COMSTOCK ABROY 

national Navigation, held at Paris in July, 1892. Such were 
his final duties before retirement. 

General Comstock's busy life was spent in the application of 
science to public needs rather than in original research, except 
incidentally when practical problems arose in his works ; but 
his interest in the advancement of science was so great that in 
1907 he donated to the National Academy of Sciences the sum 
of ten thousand dollars to create a trust fund, of which the 
interest is to be devoted to researches in electricity, magnetism, 
and radiant energy. His own experience had led him to ap- 
preciate the value of such studies. He was elected a member 
of the AcadciTiy in 1884, and was also a member of the Ameri- 
can Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the Military Order 
of the Loyal Legion. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY. 

General Comstock's writings were largely confined to tech- 
nical projects for local river and harbor improvements, and 
the annual reports of the chief of engineers contain fifteen 
papers of this character from his pen. Furthermore, besides 
the numerous reports of the permanent boards of which he 
was so long a member his signature appears upon the reports 
of sixty local engineer boards, of twenty-one of which he was 
president. To recapitulate these numerous documents is need- 
less, but the following may be named : 

Report upon the Primary Triangulation of the United States Lake 
Survey, by Lieut.-Col. C. B. Comstock, Corps of Engineers, aided by 
the assistants on the survey. Professional Papers of the Corps of 
Engineers, U. S. Army, No. 24, 1882. 

Three papers in the series of ten Public Documents Relative to the 
Scientific Surveys of the United States, and to the report thereon made 
by the National Academy of Sciences, in accordance with the require- 
ments of the Act of Congress, approved June 20, 1878. 

Variation in length of a zinc bar at the same temperature. American 
Journ. Sci., 3d ser.. Vol. 22, 1881, pp. 26-30. 

Mississippi River. Encyclopaedia Brittanica, tenth edition. 

Report on the Fifth Congress of International Navigation, held at 
Paris, July, 1892. 

Note on "change of plane" at Red River Landing. Annual Report 
of the Chief of Engineers for 1893, Part V, Appendix YY, Report of 
the Mississippi River Commission, Appendix i, pp. 3564-3569, 

201 



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